ir2501 theories of international relations lecture 5 classical liberalism
TRANSCRIPT
IR2501THEORIES OF
INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
Lecture 5
CLASSICAL LIBERALISM
MEANING OF LIBERALISM
• Multiple & changing meanings
• Different ‘National’ traditions
• Liberty/Equality Paradox
Intellectual Roots:Enlightenment
• Primacy of Reason
• Scientific Revolution
• Progressive View of History
• Individualism
• Secularism
• Capitalism
KEY FIGURES
• Thomas Paine
• Voltaire
• Jean-Jacques Rousseau
• Francis Hucheson
• David Hume
• Adam Smith
Chief Features of Liberalism
• Individual freedom (libertarian and communitarian impulses)
• Political participation (Democracy: Republican and parliamentary variants)
• Private property (market-based order)
• Equality of Opportunity (liberal paradox: minimalist versus interventionist state)
Liberal Internationalism
• Two legacies of modern liberalism:
• 1. pacification of foreign relations among liberal states
• 2. international imprudence: liberal states have fought numerous wars with non-liberal states
Kant’s Perpetual Peace
• Acceptance of three “definitive articles” of peace
• First Definitive Article requires the civil constitution of the state to be republican
• Republican: a political society that has solved the problem of combining moral autonomy, individualism, and social order
Perpetual Peace (Continued)
• Second Definitive Article: liberal republics will progressively establish peace among themselves by means of the pacific federation (ever-expanding separate peace)
• Third Definitive Article establishes a cosmopolitan law to operate in conjunction with the pacific union (Cosmopolitan law will be limited to conditions of universal hospitality
Sources of the Three Definitive Articles
• Constitutional law
• International law
• Cosmopolitan law
Democratic Peace
• Two Basic claims:
• 1. Liberal polities demonstrate restraint in their relations with other liberal polities (the so-called separate peace)
• 2. Liberal polities are imprudent in relations with authoritarian states.
• (Doyle 1986)